To walk invisible

[Dowser]

Really looked forward to this but am finding it all a bit. Meh!

Anyone else watching
It might just be me
I'm a bit tired tonight

"I'm not sure the 'romance' between Charlotte and the Curate was a romance, more along the lines of an expectation."

I thought that her father didn't want them to marry?

I wonder if she would have married if any of her sisters had lived?

I found the halfway point in the programme quite hard going but I'm glad I watched it until the end.

With regards to the house: this snippet from a health inspection about the town is quite interesting. www.bl.uk/collection-items/sanitary-report-on-haworth-home-to-the-bronts

I also didn't feel there was a reciprocal romance between Charlotte and the Curate.

Is there a mirror between that relationship and when Jane's clergyman cousin proposes to her in Jane Eyre? Or were duty marriages just so incredibly commonplace that the link is coincidental?

I doubt there was romance involved, but what would have been the motivation for Charlotte's marriage, then? Wouldn't the family have been relatively secure by then due to the success of the writing? And once Anne and Emily had passed away there would have been fewer mouths to feed anyway...

Actually I think Patrick was quite fortunate to have daughters who were not only capable but motivated towards earning money. And despite his apparent health problems he lived to a very good age for the time.

Why didn't the girls marry, do you think? Too poor? Too plain? Too socially disadvantaged?

Just musing...

Perhaps Charlotte felt that being alone with her father in the Parsonage was too stifling? It certainly wouldn't have lent an atmosphere towards literary inspiration. All haunted and surrounded by the ghosts of her dead mother, aunt and siblings.

Patrick Bronte opposed the match and refused to attend the wedding at the last moment, meaning that Charlotte's old headmistress had to give her away. Biographers speculate as to how Charlotte really felt about Arthur Bell Nicholls, as her letters retreat into reticence about him during their courtship and brief marriage -- she died less than a year after the marriage, pregnant, probably from hyperemesis-induced dehydration and exhaustion, aged 38. She was touched by his extreme devotion to her, especially after two unrequited attractions to her Belgian teacher and her publisher, and she'd lost so much when all her siblings died.

I loved what I saw of To Walk Invisible, and will rewatch. I thought the casting was brilliant - thank heavens to have a properly plain and short Charlotte! Branwell also brilliant - and I loved how it was shot, and that they had Yorkshire accents (which were remarked on by London contemporaries, though her schoolmates thought Charlotte sounded Irish), and that life in Haworth and the Parsonage wasn't made to look cutesy. And that Emily was properly ferocious.

Of course there are things fudged or left out I'd have loved to see in - like the Belgium trip, and Mary Taylor, and their continuing obsession with fantasy games, and Charlotte being lionised in London ---and will someone, for the love of God, tell TV producers that writers do no sit down to a new novel by writing out the title and their name and underlining it!??

Great muse as to why they didn't marry.

Anne was employed as a governess at 19, so family life with children who were uncontrollable would have been a disincentive.

Emily was devoted to keeping the house. Her vision of men was two extremes, passionate, wild and uncontrollable, as opposed to meek, perfect and emasculated?

Charlotte, I think, never got over her unrequited passion for Mr Heger. No one was ever going to match his unassailable masculinity.

It was a bit depressing but fantastic.

I'm still thinking about it a day later.
Loved it. Incredible women.

Thanks Elendon for all the info, also Orangesquash. Really interesting
I love WH.

"They were educated though, weren't they? Would they have really spoken with broad accents in the local dialect? "

They didn't have broad accents though, did they? They just had accents. The reason why it was difficult to understand was some mumbling and talking too fast (just like in Happy Valley). I put the subtitles on.

I thoroughly enjoyed the programme. I've only read Jayne Eyre though I'm familiar with the story of WH. I'm a big fan of Jayne Eyre and loved learning more about Charlotte and the sisters.

Charlotte, I think, never got over her unrequited passion for Mr Heger

I think she also had a 'thing' for her publisher (I think, not sure I've remembered that correctly). I thought that's where the storyline was heading when they went to London.

Should have RTFT. harpy mentions it in her post

" the ease in which the sisters seemed to whip up their books. surely there was some slog involved?!"

I don't know, but they seemed to be natural writers and also have an urgent need for financial security given Branwell's inability to hold down a job. As tragic as Branwell's alcoholism was, if he'd been able to earn money and if they had better marriage prospects, would they have produced the work they did?

Charlotte had at least one previous proposal from the brother of a friend, and some biographers think there was a romantic attraction between Anne and one of her father's curates, William Weightman, who died young. Mind you, there's so little evidence other than the most basic facts about Anne and Emily, so there's been ferocious speculation on very little basis. There is a long-discredited theory that Emily and Branwell had an incestuous affair, and even that her one solo absence, supposedly teaching at Law Hill, covered a pregnancy.

Mind you, we wouldn't even know about Charlotte's obsessive unrequited love for her Belgian teacher Monsieur Heger if a member of his family, probably his wife, hadn't picked the torn up letters out of the bin and stuck them back together.

But it's no mystery why they didn't have many opportunities to marry as plain, poor governesses/vicarage daughters at home, especially with no mother or worldly wise female relatives to introduce them to marriageable men.

Emily also had a mental breakdown. She, of them all, was the most homesick.

What I also love is Charlotte's inner energy. For Jane Eyre to escape to spend a night on the Moors. Incredible.

I feel most empathy for Anne, as I'm sure you have all guessed by now. The silent and forgotten one.

I just read on WIKI that Bramwell died of TB. I thought it was liver failure or something. So they all died of TB (Except Charlotte) probably giving it to each other?

I forgot about that painting of the sisters where he painted himself out. I used to have a postcard of that on my wall.
It's all very sad.

Harpy incest. OMG, do you think that's true?

Their Aunt Elizabeth Branwell, was a wealthy spinster in her own right and funded the niece's many requests, including the setting up of a school (which sadly failed) and the trip to Belgium. She left them each a handsome legacy too, which helped to fund the publication of the first three books.

I think they could all have easily have married, they choose not to. They each enjoyed the company of their siblings.

God, no. Like I said, the 70s spawned a lot of mad shite in Bronte theories. I can't even remember who wrote that one, but I imagine it emerged from possibly apocryphal anecdotes from Haworth locals about Emily waiting up for Branwell and putting him to bed, and the 'how did an innocent Haworth curate's daughter imagine anything as dark and elemental as the (quasi-sibling) Heathcliff/Cathy relationship?' approach.

When it's obvious these days when more biographers have studied their fantasy writings that Wuthering Heights is basically Emily and Anne's fantasy world Gondal (a kind of melodramatic saga full of assassinations and feuds) with the placenames changed to Yorkshire.

I reject the incest bit, but would put forward the theory that it was Anne Bronte who had the illegitimate child, rather than Branwell. There were many rumours about an illegitimate child born to the Brontes. All money was on Branwell, but I think it was Anne.

Fascinating discussion. I think Branwell died of TB. Maybe Anne and Emily caught it? They both died pretty soon afterwards.

I'm finding it quite difficult to get my head around how insanitary life was back then. It's no wonder the average age of death was so low. And if the Brontës had it tough, I can't begin to imagine how hard life must have been for rest of the population.

Is it true that the Brontës despised Jane Austen and her writings?

Well, I don't know about anyone else, but I have ordered Jane Eyre, The Professor, Villette, Shirley, Agnes Grey, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and a (the?) book of poems!

Do we have any idea of their father's character? Not sure if much came through in this.

I also had had the impression that the four were quite close as children, but that didn't really seem so.

If Emily & Anne were nursing Branwell I would think that they could have easily contracted TB.

I would have though that any illness he had would have been put down to his drinking anyway, so no correct/relevant treatment given-even if there was any!

Yes diddl, that's the problem with alcohol, if you drink too much people blame that and ignore anything else it may be.

I reckon they all gave it to each other absolutely

Am also ordering books! This took me back to a bleak and cold school trip as we did WH for English A level.
I had tonsillitis and felt so poorly on the moors. My best friend had a hip flask with her and saved the day! All quite fitting really

Patrick Bronte was an extraordinary character. He was born in a mud cabin to a probably illiterate farm labourer and his wife in County Down, and worked his way up to Cambridge and being ordained a C of E priest. While he was a bit of a bit of a crank in some ways (lifelong battles with local dissenters etc, shopping around for a new wife incredibly tactlessly), he was also incredibly active on behalf of the poor and sick even when he was almost entirely blind (he had surgery without anaesthetic for cataracts, as depicted in the film, as Charlotte started Jane Eyre). He campaigned for years to get a clean water supply for Haworth, because typhoid and cholera were rife. Outlived his wife and all his children. Charlotte's widower stayed on as his curate until his death.

He was also the 'inventor' of the Bronte name - he was born 'Prunty', but changed it at Cambridge.